5 Songs That Are No Day At The Beach

This past weekend, Craig's Hlist spent a good solid two days at the beach playing in the surf down off Mustang Island just south of Corpus Christi. It was one of those mental-health weekends that if we hadn't have taken, we would have ended up throwing beer bottles against the wall at an old folks' home and trying to review a children's recorder recital at a local elementary school.

The beach is stress relief, with the sound of the waves, the clear air, and the random half-naked chicks walking around. Even the boys in Kings of Leon say they are making a beach-y album for the fall, just in time for people to not be going to the beach. Good call?

You can drink and smoke where you want, pee in the water in front of everyone, and if you fall asleep on the beach (like we did) you are legally obligated to start your own Jimmy Buffett cover band. Bocaburger In Paradise's next gig is Saturday night at B. Jiggers in Galveston. Tip your bartenders.

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Our soundtrack at the beach this past weekend was a lot of Pavement, Murder By Death and the new Black Keys album, so it's not like we were blasting The Ventures or the Beach Boys all alone while touching our moustache. Judging by our musical choices, you would think our board shorts were made of flannel or denim. You are all wrong: They are made of leather.

Musicians have been honoring the sandy shores since beginning of time, to varying effect. Brian Wilson and his crew did it best (by far), and people like Jack Johnson do an adequate job (we guess). The latter at least makes the beach seem more foreboding, and we can support that. Happy-time beach singles don't do anything for us.

Even when we visited Hawaii a few years back, we were listening to Wilco's Sky Blue Sky and the then-new Portishead while flying and lying around on the shore. If there two bands that don't shout happy times, it's one led by recovering pill-popper Jeff Tweedy and a dark, experimental British group that lives in the shadows.